Screen capture woes - need help with settings

[SueC2009]

Hello all,

I have a several questions about screen captures. I apologize if this has been covered elsewhere, but I cannot seem to find the information I am looking for. I have spent all day playing around with several screen capture /processing techniques, and none have yielded results that I am happy with. Any hints or tips would be greatly appreciated!

A bit of background:

1)      I am using TCS 3. I am creating my source content in FrameMaker 10, and using the “Linking” functionality in Robohelp 9 to create Webhelp.

2)      I am single-sourcing my content to deliver PDF and Webhelp.

3)      If possible, I would like to use a screen capture utility (I’m using Snagit) to capture each screen once (possibly tiff?) so that the output looks good in PDF and in Webhelp. I’m not sure if this is possible, or if it’s best to save as TIFF for use in the PDF, and GIF for use in my Webhelp.

4)      I am capturing software screens.

5)      For the most part, I am capturing the entire software screen, not just a dialog or small window, but the entire application window. So, to get everything I need in my screen capture, I need to capture approximately 1032x683 pixels.

Here are my questions:

1)      What should I set my Windows screen resolution to? When I used to create online help (many many years ago), I used to set my screen to 800x600 and 24-bit colour. Obviously, I cannot do this since I won’t even see the entire software screen at this resolution! I also need to ensure that I can make the capture “fit” in my FrameMaker page. Should I go for the highest resolution possible and avoid resizing – or is resizing inevitable to get nice output in both PDF and Webhelp?

2)      When saving the screen capture in Snagit, should I save it to TIFF and let Robohelp do the necessary conversion during the Webhelp generation? Or, should I save it to TIFF for my PDF and to GIF for my online help?
my current TIFF settings:
Resolution: 96 dpi
Colors: True color 24-bit
Compression: LZW CMYK
my current GIF settings:
Resolution: 96 dpi
Colors: 256 (8-bit)
Non-interlaced GIF 89a

3)      When importing the image into FrameMaker, does it matter what dpi I specify? And if so, should I specify the same dpi as the capture (96 dpi). The 96 dpi seems to be a problem – it looks nice and clear but it’s too big and my image won’t fit on a single page. This is the where I start having problems…

4)      Is it ok to resize in FrameMaker? Should I instead resize in Robohelp? Or use a graphics program?

Many thanks for any help!

Sue

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi Sue.

I am no expert on this sort of thing but I think the issue here is not the screen resolution or file type you are using, but the size of the initial screen capture. If you need to capture the entire screen you are always likely to hit issues with size when trying to output to something like PDF. I always use 96dpi in Framemaker but use PNG files throughout FrameMaker and RoboHelp and have no issues with the image quality. However most of my screenshots are not entire screens. Also when I have to resize, I do this in the screen capture application itself.

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The RoboColum(n)

@robocolumn

Colum McAndrew

[Peter Grainge]

I capture at the screen resolution I find comfortable to work with and then resize using SnagIt. I only work with RoboHelp, not FM, but that works for me and I would have thought it should work in FM.

RoboHelp does not support TIFF images and they would be far too large a file size for web output. You simply don't need that sort of resolution on a monitor.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[SueC2009]

Thank you Peter and Colin for the quick responses!

I poked around the forum a little while longer last night, and I think I found a happy medium for my screen captures.

Since this is new project, I am saving my captures as GIF right off the bat.

Here are the steps that give me good results, and avoids the need to resize images (which is where I was getting into trouble!):

Windows Display Properties: 1600x900

Color quality: 32 bit

Use SnagIt or RoboCapture to capture the screen. Save as a GIF, 8-bit, non-interlaced, Optimized.

Import by Reference in FrameMaker. Use 150 or 160 dpi (be consistent). For applications where screen captures need to be of the entire software screen, I like to use 160 dpi). In my document,

Note: I will try to limit the dpi I set in FrameMaker to two settings, just to have a consistent look throughout the document --> one dpi setting for "big" screen capture (ie, the entire software screen), and another for dialogs (probably 96 dpi or so).

**The following bit is copied from another post in this forum (thank you to the original poster!)**

In Robohelp, adjust Project settings as follows: under File>Project Settings>(ImportTab)>"Edit conversion settings for FrameMaker documents" > Images, and then under "Preferred Dimensions" set the Width and Height to 0pt.

The only caveat is that if you have text callouts and arrows done in the FrameMaker anchored Frame, they look pretty bad after conversion. My fix is to add the callouts directly in my capture program (SangIt) so that the FM anchored frame only contains the linked image.

One thing to note - Although the PDF prints out very nicely, screen display is still blurry. I figure this is ok since, if users are going to read off the screen they may as well use the online help. If they want to print, then use the PDF, which prints nicely.

If anyone sees anything in my process that should be avoided, please do let me know. I'm still a novice at all this.

Thanks.

Sue

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

This should probably be over in the FrameMaker Integration forum.

[Peter Grainge]

It is now.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge